


Companionship

by Kindness



Category: Jacqueline Carey - The Kushiel's Legacy series
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 20:01:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kindness/pseuds/Kindness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The one thing that truly surprised me, riding with Maslin de Lombelon, was how easy it was to laugh.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Companionship

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts).



The one thing that truly surprised me, riding with Maslin de Lombelon, was how easy it was to laugh.

Somehow, I had never imagined Maslin possessing a sense of humor. In particular, I had never imagined him possessing one I liked so well—sunny and straightforward, deeply appealing, with a streak of irony that seemed tailor-made for our unexpected friendship.

Was it friendship?

I was not surprised that I liked how he talked, in comparison, once I learned it. He was as honest as I'd always presumed him to be, uncomplicated if not precisely simple, and I remembered how, when he'd first come to court, Sidonie had liked him for reasons seeming passing understanding. And Alais had said, accurate as ever in her way, _He's not like the others. He doesn't mince words or tell pretty lies._

I wondered if it was because, despite his lineage, he had been raised common. I wondered if perhaps I would have been the same, had I never been taken from the Sanctuary of Elua or made to face my heritage. But I doubted it. More like, Maslin was a scion of Camael, and deceit was not in his blood as in mine. Whatever treachery his father and his father's men had been party to...when all was said and done, it had been a mere sidebar, a footnote, a casualty of my mother's deep-laid plans.

Maslin spoke his mind.

And I saw him.

It was remarkable how, after years of near-enmity, my boyhood fascination rekindled itself. He was as capable and steadfast as I'd always believed, and more willing a partner in the journey than I'd, given our history, ever have expected. There was no trace of laziness to him, no distraction or hesitation when we worked, and I wondered how true the old adage was. _The scions of Camael think with their swords._

I thought it was somewhat more than that.

It was a lovely thing, being warm and clean. Betimes I thought it was the only truly simple pleasure there was. After the bath-house in Gordhoz, walking back to the inn, Maslin and I laughed. "To think," he joked, "after all we've been through—wars and glory and vengeance—and still there's no greater joy to be had than one good hot scrub."

Not strictly true, of course, I thought privately, and Sidonie flickered in my mind, but I shared in the chuckle anyway. It carried us through the cold streets and into the inn, and up through the bustling common room to our lodgings. The fire in our room roared.

Maslin felt at our new-laundered clothes, drying before the hearth, and shook his head. "Still damp."

We knelt beside the racks in our borrowed garb to thaw. It was so cold out that even the short distance between bath-house and inn was enough to freeze our wet hair stiff. I peeled the innkeeper's patched shirt off to keep it dry and shivered as snowmelt dripped down my bare skin.

Maslin looked at me.

Upon reflection, he was likely looking at my scars again, marveling at their vividness, weighing old envy against the sympathy that'd been growing in him these past days. But it was hard to be sure by firelight. And it was hard to be sure because his eyes were dark, and everything he looked at he seemed to give rapt focus. And it was hard to be sure because I had been so lonely hunting alone, and he was my acknowledged friend of late, and we are who we are.

Desire woke in my veins, sluggish but sure, and I felt my phallus stir. No doubt in a moment it would be tenting the front of the innkeeper's ill-fitting breeches, straining, throbbing. And all for a look?

I reached for him.

It was simpler than I'd have thought. He started at first, not recognizing my intention—but then my cold hands slid under his shirt. There was a sharp indrawn breath, a look, a ragged sigh. I drew the garment off him.

I have never been one for men, but he was so beautiful I ached. It was different than in the bath-house, his body before me now, my fingers splayed against the fingers of his chest. I could not have said which of us was which.

Maslin's lips were rough, but his mouth was gentle. His hands fit, at once broad and lean, the contours of my torso. He held me down and would not let me rush.

I groaned aloud when finally, finally, he eased me out of my borrowed breeches. _Patience._

He rested his palm against the underside of me, stroked the sensitive head idly with thumb and forefinger. I whimpered without quite meaning to and earned a look that, a year ago, would have been infuriating.

Tonight it filled me with such arousal I could have spent myself right there.

Maslin was skilled at the _languisement_. It was surprising. Also surprising was, the pleasure and relief of giving over control. There was healing to it—to allowing him to set the pace, allowing him to pin my hips so however much I ached to thrust I could not. To trusting.

But it was so slow. So torturously slow that it might have been a love-game of my conceiving.

I waited. _Patience._ I thought of Bryony House. Of Janelle, the Dowayne, and her tremendously skilled mouth. Though, of course, this was the opposite game, and bade fair certain to end better than that had...

The pleasure mounted, and ebbed, and mounted again.

_Patience._

In time, I cursed him and reached for myself. He caught my hand at the wrist, his lips leaving my shaft. The loss of them drew a desperate sound, not quite a moan, from my throat. Our eyes met. It was in part a contest of wills, in part a transaction of faith.

I conceded. Just this once.

When he resumed, the wet, warm pull of it was exquisite. So exquisite that I—

"Elua!"

There was no stopping it.

After I'd spent myself—it seemed to go on forever, and Maslin kept on till I was dry—we lay beside one another. I returned to myself to find him looking at me with such an expression of self-satisfaction that I wanted to drag him to his feet and beat him with the flat of my sword.

Oh—but I was warm and tired, and too deliciously sated, and...the image was exciting in a way I hadn't meant the thought. I swallowed, hard.

"So soon?" he teased, watching me. I shoved him.

We lay still, until at length I noticed the slightest restless shift of his fingers. And remembered he was still half-clothed, and like as not still painfully aroused. I sat up. I clamped one hand on his wrist—fair turnabout—and slid the other along the hard outline at his groin.

His face contorted, the muscles of his jaw working. Whatever sound sought to emerge, he choked back.

I laughed. He swore at me, but he laughed, too.

"Where did you learn to do that?" I asked when we'd subsided, stilling my free hand. For all the world, it was as if we made light conversation in a lady's salon. "I've never."

I could feel him clamping down on the sensations rioting through his body, the angles of him smoothing out, the sinews beneath my touch taut. He met my bland smile with a grin, at once wicked and defiant.

His voice was steady.

"How do you think the Unforgiven stay warm?"

We laughed.


End file.
